A recent trend has been for applications to be implemented and available in the “cloud.” A first problem with present systems for generating and managing such web-based applications (e.g. SaaS applications) is that present systems require a great deal of coding by a developer and fail to provide a “what you see is what you get” development environment, in which a developer is able to interact with and define the application and its components graphically, with little to no coding, and may see what that web-based application or component will look like upon deployment and use by an end-user throughout the development phase.
A second problem with present systems for generating and managing such web-based applications (e.g. SaaS applications) is that present systems do not provide a library of web-based applications published and shared by developers or models available for use or inclusion in other web-based applications.
A third problem with present systems for generating and managing such web-based applications (e.g. SaaS applications) is that present systems do not provide a developer a partial locking mechanism for controlling subsequent users' (e.g. a customer, an end-user, another developer seeking to incorporate published web-application into another web-application, etc.) ability to modify or customize that application at various levels of granularity.